ENTER THE LIES - ON TO THE STAGE!
Heiji
Walking in the shadows
Omni-1 North Sewers
What the…?!
Cursing himself for being so inattentive, especially when using one of his personal shortcuts through the sewers of Omni-1, the Fixer quickly slips between two walls, turns at a corner, and jumps to meet the one who was observing him, not intending to leave any witness behind him.
And then he stops, narrowed eyes staring at the little girl in front of him.
It’s been so long he hasn’t seen a child here - there aren’t that many children, now that everyone is used to DNA scans and molecular restructuration after each “death”. This one, actually, is so dirty that had she not moved, he’d surely not even had noticed her, her little face lost in the shadows that keep on creeping in the sewers. Patchered clothes, certainly taken from trashcans. Big, dark eyes simply staring at him, various bruises marking her pale face and thin arms, bushy dark hair that surely hasn’t been washed in a long while. She may be eight or nine, from what he can see–ten at the most–and yet… yet, in these sad, resigned eyes…
The Fixer removes his hand from her mouth, shaking his head in disgust. A sewers’ brat. Nothing more than a sewers’ brat. He is getting too paranoid these days.
“Ya won’t kill me?” the child suddenly says, raising her head to look at him straight in the eyes, with a terribly calm acceptance of her fate. Heiji keeps silent some more time, wondering if she’s going to use the old knife she’s holding tight between her fingers. There’s blood on the knife. Rats’ blood, certainly, or worse. Her hand is trembling, though, and she looks so frail that it’s very unlikely she will ever manage to harm him.
“…What’s your name?” he finally asks, another question when an answer was needed.
Those eyes…
They were so much like hers…
“… Jenae. I think Daddy called me Jen. But he’s gone.”
“And your mother?” Heiji asks, slowly frowning, and wondering why… yes, why he’s talking to her, instead of simply taking her life and go away.
“She’s gone too. ‘Cuz of me, I think. I din’t wanna, but.. but… she was beatin’ me ‘gain… and I had tha knife… and I… I…”
Unable to speak any longer, unable to even think about what she’s doing at the moment, the little girl suddenly bursts into tears, grasping the astonished Fixer by the hand and burying her face against his old coat.